Okhla does not lack clinics. And if you went by the names, it does not lack hospitals either. There are as many as two clinics and one 'hospital' standing cheek by jowl just in one street of Okhla Vihar. Cross a street towards the right and there is one more clinic, go left instead and there is another clinic cum hospital. That makes it five clinics in the space of three streets.
Head to Batla House and you would find clinics and doctors almost after every block. Come to Shaheen Bagh and there are more clinics. Yet, for all these clinics, when people want serious medical care they head to Holy Family hospital. Holy Family is just off Jamia University, so it is not far. But for the middle classes of this locality the care is somewhat pricey, though one must add that Holy Family is certainly cheaper than say Max Hospitals or the Escorts Heart that lies at the end of the Mohammad Ali Jauhar Marg, just a block down the road from Holy Family.
The long and the short of it is that a truly affordable, easily accessible, quality healthcare facility has been lacking in this area. The 'hospitals' and clinics that are already here, in all their abundance, are simply not good enough. There is a service gap as wide as a road as far as healthcare is concerned.
Now a new hospital has come up to fill this gap. The hospital is called Al Shifa, and it lies right next to the Jamaat e Islami headquarters in the Dawat nagar complex. As you pass by Abul Fazl on your way to Shaheen Bagh, you would see the façade of the hospital standing out among the long row of low rise, somewhat dilapidated buildings. The architecture of the building, with its clean white front and its enclosure is rather distinctive. It also seems to have come up in record time, in a mere matter of months.
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